Hello and welcome to The Marketing Blog. My name is Michael Fleischner and this blog has been developed to share my more than 14 years of Marketing experience with anyone interested in learning more about marketing or Internet marketing. The Marketing Blog markets marketing simple and covers all aspects of marketing with a particular focus on internet marketing.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

I was recently asked by a blog reader about launching a new website to support the release of a brand new product launching this summer. The question was, "What can I do to our product website to ensure that it is 'optimized'?"

Well, there are a variety of things you can do to optimize your site - but be patient. So many people I work with expect #1 rankings within days of launching their site. Start with a strong foundation, well designed internal linking structure, and link development programs from authoritative sites, and the rankings will come. Here are just a few of my 'basics' for launching a new website.

JavascriptPut all your JavaScripts in external files and link to them. If external file is not an option move the code to the end of the document under .

TablesAvoid unnecessary tables where possible. Limit your table embedding to a depth of three. Where possible avoid the whole table thing and start using div tags and CSS to define position.

ALT attributes of an image tag Place ALT attributes (alternative information) to all images, call the image what it is. Do not repeat keywords more then once. If no use of an ALT attribute leave it blank. Use no more then a 100 characters.

Title attributes of a link tag Should add additional information that compliments the linked text. Call it what it is, do not repeat keywords more then once and keep to less then a 100 characters.

Robots.txt fileThis file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Also use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.

Optimize your URLsUse Search Engine Friendly URLs (for dynamic sites)

Use keywords in your URLUse dashes or underscores to separate words in your URLs (keyword2-keyword3.html or keyword1_keyword2.html)

Dynamic URL ParametersMultiple parameters in a dynamic URL can often mean that a search engines spider will choose to ignore the document. SE reps have long urged site creators to limit dynamic parameters to 2, optimally to 1 so that spiders will easily crawl them.

URL LengthThe overall length of a URL may be used as a component in trust or value - exceptionally long URLs might be viewed as unusable and more likely to be spam. Keep to one subdirectory (folder) from the root if being structured.

Absolute URLsUse throughout the site i.e. http://www.yoursite.com/pagename.htm

Again, these are just some basics when launching a new site. There are many other factors you should consider and evaluate on an ongoing basis. My recommendation is that you look into a third party to help you manage all the details. Feel free to use my Marketing Service Provider

Lastly, don't forget to be patient. SEO takes time - especially with a new website. When I launch a new site, I expect that it will take at least 4 - 5 months before I see solid rankings! Search or simple do a Google search for the type of vendor your seeking.